Schooling the next generation of cyclists

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Matt Fritzinger(Image credit: Gary Boulanger)

An interview with Matt Fritzinger, November 7, 2008

The 37 year-old former high school teacher dabbled in pole vaulting, cross-country running and swimming in his hometown of Libertyville, but was mediocre at best. It was his time spent on the Northbrook velodrome near his house that had the greatest impact on his earlier athletic career. Cycling was enough to scratch the athletic itch in Fritzinger, who spent two years racing for the collegiate cycling team at the University of California-Berkeley in the 1990s.

Bike Radar sat down with Fritzinger at Drake High School in San Anselmo, California, at the conclusion of his annual Leader's Summit. The congenial cyclist had just returned from a ride on the fabled trails of Camp Tamarancho in nearby Fairfax, birthplace of the modern mountain bike. We discussed the past, present and future of the League, as the long shadow of Mount Tamalpais loomed over the parking lot.

Matt Fritzinger: Several things came together. Bike racing became a big thing for me in college at UC-Berkeley but, due to an injury, I couldn't ride for five years, so I needed to find other things at that time. I went from becoming a mechanical engineer to becoming a school teacher. I was finally strong enough to race a bike during my earliest years of teaching. I was getting my teaching credentials at night, so I was able to get serious about bike racing again during that period.

It was during those early years that I was gaining ground as a Category 3 racer, achieving a long-term goal of racing in Northern Italy for an entire summer in 2000. I had the fitness, health (and enough money) to get the life-of-a-pro experience at a legit cycling camp. My coach was Ron Palazzo at the Velo Veneto Camp. It was the first time I'd ever had a coach. He was (and still is) an amazing coach. He inspired me to become a true coach in every sense of the word.

The 10-week experience in Italy opened my eyes to how a whole community gets behind a sport - families, local businesses, etc. So when I returned to California, I didn't have another goal beyond teaching. I started working on the plan for the NorCal High School Mountain Bike Racing League in the fall of 2000. By the spring of 2001 we launched our first six-race series. By the end of our first season four teams had organized themselves.

There are four of us full-time on staff and we're all overworked. Our annual budget as a non-profit organisation is approximately US$350,000 (£218,000), but as we all know, what counts most is how much is in the bank. Twenty-five percent of our budget comes from individual donations. Specialized have helped grow the corporate sponsorship piece of the pie recently. They understand what we're about.

We had folks from Arizona and Colorado here at our Leadership Summit, and they're chomping at the bit to start something. We have certain services that we can provide. In SoCal it came with sponsorship money, energy and a league president. In another state it may come with less money but more time to contribute full-time to the work, much like I did in the early days of NorCal. We want to have a long list of criteria that a founding committee would have to approach us with before we partner, so we can be true to our programs and our brand. We've put a lot of work into this.

It all comes down to a fun-to-danger ratio for us, though. For cycling to succeed as a sport in high school, become institutionalised and accepted, side-by-side as a legitimate sport, we need to put our best foot forward. And I think that's mountain bike racing for kids. The speeds are slower, the ground is softer than pavement, and never mind how brutal road racing is. Imagine yourself as a freshman boy, lining up with 100 other new racers, on the road versus in the dirt. A few early crashes and many of these kids would never come back.

Cyclo-cross is a possibility, because races could be held on school grounds. Mountain biking is more accessible and has a better fun-to-danger ratio. Also, cyclo-cross requires another bike. On the flipside, though, riders usually realize by their junior year in school that if they're going to be competitive, they need to train, even race, on the road. It's astonishing how fast these kids are in such a short time. Some become Category 2 racers by the time they're seniors.

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